Curfews and town centre bans introduced as minister launches antisocial behaviour crackdown in Staffordshire

Police across England and Wales are being handed new powers including curfews and exclusion zones, with the national rollout highlighted during a ministerial visit to Staffordshire.

During a visit to Staffordshire, policing minister Sarah Jones announced that persistent troublemakers could face town centre bans and curfews under newly launched Respect Orders aimed at stamping out nuisance behaviour in communities across England and Wales.

The measures allow police, local authorities, social housing providers and transport operators to pursue tougher crackdowns on repeat offenders, with breaches treated as a criminal offence carrying prison terms of up to two years.

Ms Jones was in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, where she heard directly from residents and Staffordshire Police officers about the toll of persistent disorder, issues that are felt acutely across towns across the Black Country, Staffordshire, and the wider West Midlands, including problems like town centre antisocial behaviour, e-scooters, and street drinking.

Speaking during the visit, Ms Jones insisted that such conduct must not be treated as a normal part of daily life.

She said: “We know, across the country, antisocial behaviour is pernicious. We shouldn’t tolerate it, we shouldn’t accept it.”

She added: “We want our neighbourhoods to be places where people can enjoy, they can feel safe, they can go to the pub, they can go to the shop, they can get their hair done, without feeling like they are going to be abused by somebody, threatened by somebody, or see something horrific going on in their neighbourhoods.

“That is what we want, and that is what should be normal. That’s what we should all be aiming for. The Respect Orders will help with that.

“I know there’s a lot more that we need to be doing, but we are trying our best to make sure every single tool that police need, that the council need, is there, so that they can use them to tackle these problems.”

The minister inspected an offending hotspot and met local partners to discuss putting the orders into action. Addressing the concerns raised locally, she said town centres were suffering because of persistent problems.

She said: “The town centre doesn’t feel as safe as it should do because of persistent antisocial behaviour, whether that’s people street drinking, taking drugs, shouting, being disorderly.

“It’s something that makes us feel less comfortable going into our town centres and that’s what we want to try and reverse. Crucially, we’re saying there must be more police in our neighbourhood.

“We’ve already uplifted the number of police in our neighbourhoods by just shy of 4,000 extra police and we want to keep doing that because loud and clear from all of the people we spoke to, they want to see the police, and they want to see the police taking action.”

Pressed on whether the legislation would create additional pressure on the court system, Ms Jones said work had been done alongside the Ministry of Justice.

She said: “We agree how it’s going to be done and how it’s going to be implemented, and we implement these things at a time when the courts will be able to deal with them.

“We know the courts are very challenged at the moment, we absolutely know that, but this is really important.

“If the public are saying to us, antisocial behaviour is actually something that makes me feel less safe in my town, that really affects my quality of living, then we need to be responding, and the courts need to be responding.

“We just need that concerted effort so that everybody is saying antisocial behaviour is not low level, it’s not something that comes last on the list of priorities, it should be upfront as a really big push from all the different agencies to tackle it.”

Chief Inspector Cliff Goodwin, local policing commander for Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire Moorlands, joined the minister and highlighted an issue with public reporting.

He said: “We need to encourage our communities to report things into the police.

“I’ve heard today about reporting apathy, I think part of my job is to keep encouraging the community to report when they see antisocial behaviour, to let them know that we are hearing them.”

Chief Insp Goodwin explained that towns across the country were dealing with shared problems, such as congregating groups, public fouling, drug misuse, and issues involving e-bikes and e-scooters.

He said the orders would help officers stop bad behaviour “in its tracks” by putting persistent offenders before magistrates when diversionary efforts fail.

He said: “We haven’t got lots of new officers, but what we are able to do is focus our attention, based on reports and understanding the intelligence, to make sure we put the officers in the right place, at the right time, when antisocial behaviour is happening.

“I would love more police officers, but I think what we have to get better at is understanding where we need to put police officers, how we better use the officers we’ve got, and we can do that better when we’re working with our partners and sharing that information.”